


The Problem With Knots

by Tallihensia



Category: Smallville
Genre: Drama, Fairy Tales, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:11:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallihensia/pseuds/Tallihensia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you can't see the person for the lies, there's a problem. Sometimes the only way through is to undo the knots, not untie them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem With Knots

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Only mine in my dreams. ^^ This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.
> 
>  **Warnings:** none
> 
>  **Spoilers:** General first few seasons.
> 
>  **Notes:** A fairytale fusion of the Gordian Knot and Smallville. Kindof. For the CW-Land Challenge 3.19.

## The Problem With Knots

In the days before, there once was a peasant boy. He had come down out of the sky and the couple that picked him up loved him very much and took him for their own. They were scared, though, for he was not like the others and they wanted to protect him.

In their love, they went to him and they carefully wrapped a lie around him and tied it with a bow of affection. They told him he was just like the others, yet special, and they did not show him his sky ship or tell him where he came from. For they wanted him to be safe and they wanted to keep him for themselves, and this then, was the first lie.

As the boy grew, the lies that surrounded him also grew. Some were tied there by his parents, with love, to protect him. Others he created himself, much clumsier than his parent's lies, with great giant knots and no bows. They were still lies, though. "I didn't break that toy." "He has allergies, he can't come over." "It wasn't me who put that hole in the wall." "We didn't see him do anything." "I like the girl next door."

Most people couldn't see the lies that surrounded the boy. The boy was handsome and clever, and some people wanted to be his friends, but his parents that loved him kept him away so that he would be safe. Those that did get close to the boy found they could only get so close, and no closer, for the lies that were knotted all around him kept them away.

The boy had a few friends. A child who had grown up with him and thought nothing of the invisible distance for it had always been there, and a girl who came in and saw the boy and wanted him. She was frustrated by the distance and as she tried to get closer, she started seeing the knots of lies for what they were. Curious and frustrated, she tried to untie some of the knots, poking at them and unraveling some of them. The boy, however, shrank from her efforts and cried out, for his lies had been put around him with love for his safety and he could see nothing wrong with them.

The girl wanted to be his friend, and so she looked at the other boy who was his friend and learned to stay the proper distance behind the knots. Still, though, she knew the lies were there.

As time would have it, the boy grew to a teen. He was a handsome and clever teen, just as he had been a boy. However, as the boy had grown, so too had the lies. The knots around him were of proportionate size and growing ever in their complexity. To the teen, this was natural and right, for they had been given to him in love. He continued to add his lies to the pile, ones that seemed to him to be as natural as living. "My dad gave me a ride to school." "I use the telescope to watch the stars." "Nothing hurts me."

One day, Fate looked down from the skies and said to itself, "Where is the boy I sent to Earth? I cannot see this boy and he was supposed to be great and wonderful. I gave him gifts so he would be safe, but he is nowhere to be found." Finally, after much searching, Fate found the lovely sky boy, now grown to a teen, and Fate shook its head sadly. The knots of lies had surrounded the teen so greatly that for those who could see the knots, there was no seeing the person inside.

Fate knew that if its child from the sky was to grow to reach his destiny, that something would have to be done about the knots. So Fate sighed for the work and rearranged portions of the tale it had been telling and brought two parts together sooner and in a different way than the threads had first been woven. Not all patterns always tell the same tale, and this one would just be a little different. Fate was not sure if this would work, for the threads were old and stubborn, and the knots were new and complex, but it was the best chance they had.

A bridge. A car. A drowning. A saving. These were the threads Fate used to change the tale.

After the teen had pulled the young man from the water and given life back into his lungs, the young man looked up at the teen and wanted to be closer; as close as the life had been between them.

The young man reached for the teen, and the teen, instinctively, tied another lie between them.

At first, neither noticed, as they got to know each other with the standard space that people leave between them. They were happy at just being together. Still, though, the lies piled on. "Adrenalin." "I don't know." "That's silly."

As the teenager grew, he became convinced that lies were the right and proper way between people and his knots grew stronger and thicker, tied sometimes with violence and blood. He courted his girl next door with those same lies and she was uneasy yet didn't know why.

Eventually, the young man discovered the knots. That first one between them had always gnawed at him, though he could not see the loops of it. As he studied it, it became clearer, and so too did the others. The mass of knots were all mysteries and things to be discovered and unraveled. He worked on the knots one by one, trying to untangle them all until he lost track of the person behind them and saw only the knots themselves.

The teen, fast approaching his own manhood, was frightened of this. As he had done to the girl before, he cried out and tried to stop the unraveling. He frantically tied more and more knots into what was, by this time, practically a giant ball of knots that he lived within. When those too, were untied, the teen tried to push away his friend with harsher lies yet. "You shouldn't be doing that." "You were imagining it." Even the teen, though, balked at the knot that would have been "You're crazy," and he half-tied, untied, retied, untied, that particular knot until finally the knot was firmly tied by another.

For not all knots around the teen were all his own. It had started with his parents, his friends had added to them, and then they had grown to encompass more than they should have. He accepted all of them as part of himself, though, as natural as his ball of knots around him had become.

As the young man worked on the knots, careless now of the teen, the teen pulled away, hoping space would keep him safe. His childhood friend finally saw the knots and left because of them. The girl he courted kept leaving when the knots would be between them and coming back when there was enough space that she forgot about them. His other friend continued to turn a sorrowing blind eye to the knots, knowing they were there but accepting them as part of what he was. Accepting them, however, did not bring her any closer to the teen.

The saga continued until the teen had become a young man himself and his best friend, the other young man, only had a bare memory of the teen.

Fate looked at the mess its weaving had become, and it sighed. The threads were old. The weaving tried to keep going back to the original story yet the original story made no sense the way the knots had woven in.

Another car, some more water, an entrance to a new life hovering on the edges. It blinked in and out of view even as Fate watched. All would depend on their actions from that point, for not only Fate could tell at this point where they would go.

"Lex, you don't even see **me**! You only see a damn mystery."

The young man continued to work on the knot that currently had his attention.

"Lex," the boy, who had become a teen, who was now also a young man, cried out.

The young man finally looked up. All he could see were the knots. He remembered a teen, somewhere there, but he could not see them. "Clark? Are you somewhere in there?"

"This **is** me! You're untying me, and it hurts."

It didn't really, of course, for the knots and lies were separate from the boy, but he had lived for so long with them that he truly believed they were a part of him.

The other had his own share of protections and separators around him, but the difference was that he knew that they there separate, that he, or others, had put them up and that he was somewhere inside. For the first time, he realized that his friend did not know that.

"Clark, they're lies. You cannot live inside the lies. Not and be who you really are. You keep telling me to be me. I'm telling you that we only see the lies instead of you. I will take down my barriers if you will come out from yours."

"They're not. They're love. I live wrapped within the love and it protects me."

Years of trying to unravel the knots between them had gotten the friend nowhere. Despite this, he tried again, remembering and wanting the person inside of them.

Clark cried out again, and shied away.

Finally, the first young man stopped looking at the knots and concentrated instead on simply getting to the person inside. If the other young man wouldn't come out, he would have to come in. He drew his sword.

"No!"

The fear was real, the terror was absolute, there would be no removal of the lies.

One young man watched another, and they both sorrowed that it had come to this.

"Clark, trust me."

He said he did, and tied a stronger, tighter knot between them.

With clenched jaw, the young man watched the knots form. "Clark, trust me."

Another knot tied.

"Please."

The man who had fallen from the skies as a boy looked at his friend, looked at what they were becoming, and finally said yes, and did not build another lie.

The sword swung up, then down.

The sky man fell to his knees, naked for the first time since he'd first walked the Earth. So much light around him, so much air, so much of everything. He was overwhelmed by it all.

The man with the sword dropped the sword and put his own coat around the sky man. He held him close and whispered words of comfort. He saw the knots lying all around them, and ignored them all in favor of the man in his arms.

They went home together, and the man from earth showed the man from the sky what clothes were, and how to take them on and off upon need and how, properly worn, they could be protection without hiding the person inside. He promised he would always be there, and no need for lies.

In return, the sky man helped the earth man to remove armor his father had laid upon him when he was young. He sorrowed for the scars upon the earth man's body and kissed each and every one of them until they were better. He promised he would always return and rose in the sky, free from the weight of lies to fly and protect the world, and returned to his earth man.

Together, they took the armor and the sword and hung them in their hall. The knot of lies they hung about the edges, showing where the sword had split through them and how no untying would ever have removed them but only an undoing. Then they made their home a light and airy place, with sunshine and happiness, free from the past that had weighed upon them.

Fate looked at the new weaving and was pleased. It was not the weaving of old. Nor was it the weaving Fate had planned. Yet it was true, and clean, and the picture was right for this world. Fate was satisfied with the way this tale had come out.

  


* * *

  


END

**Author's Note:**

>  _Based on[the Gordian Knot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot). With some judicious reweaving. No tale is ever quite the same; it depends on the storyteller. ^^ (And honestly? The part about Alexander the Great was totally accidental, I'd forgotten about that part ;p)_
> 
> Cross-posted to [my livejournal](http://alatrific.livejournal.com/31342.html).


End file.
